The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [312]
Then the executioner unclasped his red cloak, spread it on the ground, laid the body on it, threw in the head, tied it by its four corners, loaded it on his shoulder, and got back into the boat.
Coming to the middle of the Lys, he stopped the boat, and holding his burden up over the river, cried in a loud voice:
“Let God’s justice be done!”
And he dropped the dead body into the deepest part of the water, which closed over it.
Three days later, the four musketeers reentered Paris. They had kept within the limits of their leave, and that same evening they went to pay their accustomed visit to M. de Tréville.
“Well, gentlemen,” the brave captain asked them, “did you amuse yourselves well on your excursion?”
“Prodigiously,” said Athos, clenching his teeth.
LXVII
CONCLUSION
On the sixth of the following month, the king, keeping the promise he had made the cardinal to quit Paris and return to La Rochelle, left his capital still stunned by the news just spreading there that Buckingham had been assassinated.
The queen, though warned that the man she had loved so was in danger, refused to believe it when his death was announced to her. She even went so far as to cry out imprudently:
“It’s not true! He has just written to me!”
But the next day she was forced to believe this fatal news. La Porte, detained in England like everyone else by the orders of King Charles I, arrived bearing the last doleful present that Buckingham had sent to the queen.
The king’s joy was very keen. He did not bother to disguise it, and even showed it blatantly before the queen. Louis XIII, like all weak hearts, lacked generosity.
But the king soon became gloomy and ill-humored again: his brow was not the sort that clears for long. He felt that in returning to the camp he was going back into slavery, and yet he returned.
The cardinal was the fascinating serpent for him, and he was the bird that flits from branch to branch without being able to escape him.
And so the return to La Rochelle was profoundly sad. Our four friends especially aroused the astonishment of their comrades. They traveled together, side by side, their eyes grim and their heads bowed. Athos alone raised his broad brow from time to time; his eyes flashed, a bitter smile passed over his lips; then, like his comrades, he let himself lapse again into his ruminations.
As soon as the escort arrived in a town, once they had taken the king to his lodgings, the four friends withdrew either to their own quarters or to some out-of-the-way tavern, where they neither gambled nor drank; they only spoke in low voices, looking around carefully to see that no one was listening to them.
One day when the king had made a halt en route in order to hawk for magpies, and the four friends, as was their habit, instead of following the hunt, had stopped off in a tavern on the main road, a man who came galloping from La Rochelle stopped at the door to have a glass of wine and glanced into the room where the four musketeers were sitting at a table.
“Ho, there! M. d’Artagnan!” he said. “Is that you?”
D’Artagnan raised his head and uttered a cry of joy. This man, whom he called his phantom, was the unknown man of Meung, the rue des Fossoyeurs, and Arras.
D’Artagnan drew his sword and rushed for the door.
But this time, instead of fleeing, the unknown man leaped from his horse, and advanced to meet d’Artagnan.
“Ah, Monsieur!” said the young man, “so I’ve found you at last! This time you won’t escape me.”
“Nor is that my intention, Monsieur, for this time I am seeking you. In the name of the king, I arrest you and declare that you must surrender your sword to me, Monsieur, and that without any resistance. Your life depends on it, I warn you.”
“Who are you, then?” asked d’Artagnan, lowering his sword, but without surrendering it yet.
“I am the chevalier de Rochefort,” replied the unknown man, “equerry to M. le cardinal de Richelieu, and I have